Adaku Ufere-Awoonor

Adaku Ufere-Awoonor is an international Energy professional with over a decades’ global experience of legal and business advisory in the oil & gas, power, mining and extractive industries, leading multicultural and multilingual teams across Africa and with a strong professional network. She is the CEO of DAX Consult, a consulting firm with offices in Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia, which provides legal and business advisory services to local and foreign companies.

Adaku has extensive experience advising ministries, governments, IOCs and NOCs globally. Her expertise includes PSC/PSA negotiations, negotiating farm-ins with major IOCs, legal framework and contract assessments, facilitating legal and fiscal frameworks for major billion-dollar energy projects in Africa, creating and assisting in the implementation of contract management systems for government regulators and cross-border negotiations between sovereign governments.

Adaku has an LL.B from the University of Nigeria, a BL from the Nigerian Law School, an LLM in Oil and Gas from the University of Aberdeen, and a Certification in Public Management from the University of California, Davis. She is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association, the International Bar Association, the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators, the Women in African Power, the Institute for Energy Security and the Young Women in Energy Association. She is also a certified Chartered Arbitrator and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Adaku is a respected international conference speaker and panelist, having spoken at conferences in Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan, South Africa, the United States of America, United Kingdom, the Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria; and a prolific writer, with published articles in the field of energy and project finance. She is a recipient of numerous honours which include the 40 Under 40 Leading Lawyers in Nigeria in 2016, Attorney of the Year at the African Legal Awards in 2017, Young African Professional of the Year by the Independent Pan-African Youth Parliament in 2018, a Fellow of the Institute of Energy Security, Ghana and a Mandela Washington Fellow 2018.

Adaku is passionate about and lends her time to causes promoting girls’ education, gender equality, women empowerment, the advancement of women in leadership positions and the elimination of gender-based violence.